DriverPacks

It's a nice sentiment, but given how many different drivers are in existence uploading a few for TechRepublic users is not likely to be useful.

Can I suggest you check out the DriverPacks project? People submit their drivers there so they get included in massive bulk packs of drivers. That way when you set up a new computer you can just point it to your driverspack DVD or folder and it will find all the drivers for you.

Reponse To Answer

Not to be argumentative, but my experience is that the third party sites may every once in awhile have some weird obsolete driver you cannot find anywhere else, but more often than not they are just a cesspool of spyware and advertising.

For my Dell or HP computers, the manufacturer sites are perfectly adequate, as are the sites for my ATI video card or Broadcomm network adapter or the other dozens of hardware brands I own.

Reponse To Answer

@robo_devDriverPacks is not one of those third-party sites that wants payment or membership or to trick you into running spyware. It's just a delivery mechanism for the same drivers you get from HP/Dell/whaterver.

The way it works is someone downloads a driver; let's say an HP network card driver. They then extract it and remove the crap and keep just the core driver (normally just the .sys, .cat and .inf). This then gets packages up along with the hundreds of other network card drivers in existence and offered for download as a single package.

As a user, you just go and download the package(s). When you set up a new machine you just point it to your DriverPacks folder and Windows will find all the drivers without you needing to go searching for the correct drivers for your hardware. In other words; you have a package containing (pretty much) all the drivers in the world!

If you only format a handful of machines per year then sure this won't save that much time. If you format a lot though then this can be a God-send. Particularly if you take it to the next level and slipstream the drivers into your Windows discs. (And even more particularly if you then go to install Windows on a machine that doesn't have it's SATA driver built in to the normal Windows disc).

I'll grant you that this is much less useful than it used to be. The chance of having a driver on Windows Update is much, much better under Vista/7/8 than with XP. And the pain of having to save SATA drivers on a floppy and hit F6 at the right part of the boot process under XP is thankfully gone now. In the past though having a Windows XP disc with the slipstreamed MSD drivers has saved me hours and hours of frustration.

As an aside, for anyone looking for a tool that will find the drivers they need for an individual PC (without the need to browse the manufacturers sites or braving the advertising loops that many third-party drivers sites are), I recommend Driver Genius. Driver Magician does the same job too and looks to be just as good. Note that neither are free.

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